I wanna restrict model to calling to db only
while controller will call model, libraries or helpers.
I do not want to put logic in controller nor in the model to prepare data for views.
Now the logic for preparing all the arrays for views are done in controller. I am creating a library to separate this part as sometimes i feel it is overloading the controller
Hence, i want to create a library class and make controller build the view data before throwing it to the view. It is not exactly templating.
The thing is i do not know how to name it.. Any good suggestion ?
I am thinking view_builder, ui_builder, ui_components?
Cheers
Here's how I'd layer the app:
View
Controller
Service
Persistence
View is either desktop or browser or mobile-based.
Controller is tightly bound to view. It's responsible for validating and binding input to model objects, calling services to fulfill use cases, and routing the response to the next view.
Services fulfill use cases. They know about units of work, own transactions, and manage connections to resources like databases. They work with model objects, other services, and persistence objects. They're interface-based objects, but can be remoted or exposed as web services - RPC-XML, SOAP, REST or other.
Persistence is another interfaced-based object. The implementation can be relational or NoSQL; the important thing is that the interface expresses CRUD operations for model objects. If you use generics, it's possible to write one interface that works for all.
I wouldn't have model objects persist themselves. I'm aware of the "anemic domain model" pejorative, but I think more exciting behavior should center around the business purpose, not CRUD operations.
Good setup. I also sometimes use CI libraries to work out the kinks in a returned data array before passing it to a view. I also sometimes just use the model.
And good for you for thinking about names - I think all the ones you mention are fine; you could also think about naming your library something like data_structure or array_to_object - or something more specific to your own problem like friend_map or tag_cloud.
My advice: pick a name, and then don't be afraid to change it if something more descriptive comes along or the function of your library evolves into something else. Find+replace is your friend.
Related
Is it a good practice to use Spring Controller class(with #ModelAttribute) and the jsp to prepare model at the same time or the model has to be prepared only by Spring and the view from the jsp?
The idea comes from this topic . I have a Controller class:
#RequestMapping(value = {"", "/"}, method = RequestMethod.GET, params = "mode=create")
public ModelAndView showCreatePage(#ModelAttribute("createForm") ApplicationCreateForm form)
{
return customMethod("some string");
}
and in my jsp I have:
<jsp:useBean id="createForm" scope="request" class="com.example.ApplicationCreateForm"/>
I do not need to populate the form with the information to be present to the user all fields are empty.
So from what I uderstand I have been declared ApplicationCreateForm bean twice, with the same scope - request.
Is it a good design practice to use both at the same time? Is there a reason for that? Does the second declaration(in jsp) give me more power, for example to override the model or it is complete unnecessary? Does the second declaration overrides the first one when both are present?
There are many things wrong with this implementation.
Is it MVC?
If JSP know about Model, why do we need controller. Lets remove the routing engine and use JSP directly to consume Model. But then the application will be monolithic. I believe you do not want that. We have two major flavours of MVC. In both, controller is the front facing object. It receives the command, interprets it, works with data layer and gets Model. If required the Model gets converted into a viewModel and then this object is passed to the view.
Why viewModel?
Say we are implementing paging on screen. We are showing list of persons. Person is your model here but your view also need to know page number, page size etc. Your model thus may not fit directly in this case.
Say we need data from multiple tables to shown on screen. This data is related in some way. Now will you pass separate model objects to view and let it do all the business logic? Ideally no.
Should not the design support DTO or ViewModel or Commands and Queries?
We want our application to be designed properly. As stated above we need to send data to view or clients (REST) after processing. Processed data may not map to you domain until unless we are just creating a CRUD stuff. What if you want to implement CQS or CQRS?
Where is separation, where is SOLID?
If my view is performing business logic then where is 'S'? If view knows about model and need to be changed in slightest of changes in model then where is 'O'?What if I want to separate queries from command (CQS) and scale the two things separately?
To conclude I would say, yes you can do this but it is not good if you are developing a decent size application or you think it will eventually be one. I have seen people using model entities starting from ORM, to controller to view. It will work but the question is do you want a monolithic and tightly coupled application. As per my experience the presentation logic (view) has very different logic and need of data in comparison of controller and same goes for your data access layer.
I think you should prepare your model fully in spring controller. Then view should be as passive as possible, ie. only showing model attributes received from controller while having no further knowledge about application logic. This approach gives you clean separation of concerns and you view is as independent as possible and can be easily switched for different view technology - eg. thymeleaf or freemarker templates. The whole idea of MVC is to separate presentation layer and by leaking business logic to view you create unnecessary dependencies.
Your view should be as simple as possible, as the logic leaked to view makes it very hard to test and reuse. On the other hand, if your logic is nicely separated, you can test it easily and reuse it easily. Ideally, business logic should be completly independent on web environment.
By defining you are creating tight coupling between your view and class com.example.ApplicationCreateForm, using spring mvc you achive loose coupling between your controllers, view and model it might happen that you change you model name but you still have same properties in it which might be enough for view, in above case you will need to update your view but it won't be required in case you are using Spring MVC.
Since spring comes with the concept of making things loosely coupled to make your code more testable, you should always keep in mind that separation of concern is your priority. So it is always the best practice to prepare your model fully in Controller, not in views.
Keep thing simple , make your controller responsible for preparing your model, and keep your views to display the model only.
So, a big NO to your question. The second declaration isn't going to make you powerful, rather help you to be tied up.
Could anyone give an example of why it would be advantageous to use MVC instead of a simpler Model and a View only.
Note: whether it's called MVC or MVP (Model-View-Presenter), I'm talking about the one where the View receives input, then the Controller will respond to the input event by interpreting the input into some action to be done by the Model. When the model changes, the View will update itself by responding to events from the model.
What is disadvantageous of simply letting the Model respond to events in the View and vice versa?
In MVC, if I changed the model in a way that affects the controller then I'll have to do changes in the controller. In Model-View, if I change the Model, I'll have to update the view.
So, it seems like we are introducing complexity by adding the "controller" part?
In MVC, the Model is blind to its environment, the view can be too - passing off (blindly) its events to the controller, which knows more about the view and model. So when all is said and done, the controller is the 'non-reusable' disposable part of the system, since it is the most context aware component.
if I changed the model in a way that affects the controller...
The the model should expose simple CRUD methods in such a way that those using the methods do not have to know anything about the passed update object, nor what really happens inside the model.
This means that the view, IMO, has to do a bit of work by creating the passed record, since Controllers are supposed to be stateless and the view is more persistent. Controllers get triggered and 'kick-in' do their work with a passed object and do not have a state.
The passed data is created by some sort of generic convention.
Let me go even further. Suppose you have a view, a tablegrid, and a control whose enabled property is dependent on item is selected in the grid -- you COULD create a view that handles both those controls and this logic internally, and that would probably be the way to go in such a simplified example.
But the more atomic your views are, the more reusable they become, so you create a view for every, yes every, control. Now you are looking at a situation where views have to know about each other in order to register themselves for the right notification...
This is where the controller steps in, since we want to stick all these dependencies onto him, the long term disposable one. So the controller manages this type of view-to-view notification scheme.
Now your views are ignorant as they can be and independent, thus reusable.
You can code a view without having to know about the system, or the 'business logic' as they like to call it. You can code a model without having to know too much about your goals (though it does help to tweak the model to enable it to return the datasets you have in mind).... but controllers, they are last and you have to have the previous two firmed up before you can wire things together.
Here is another thing to think about -- just as the Model is supposed to abstract-away and provide a generic interface to the underlying implementation of the data it is managing (the client does not know if the data comes from a DB, a file, a program setting, etc) -- the view should also abstract away the control it is using.
So, ultimately this means a view should not (caveat below) have functions/properties that look like this:
public property BackgroundColor{get;set}
Nor
public function ScrollBy(x,y){}
But instead:
public SetProp(string name, object val){}
And
public DoCmd(string name, object val){}
This is a bit contrived, and remember I said ultimately... and you ask why is this a good idea?
With reusability in mind, consider that you may one day want to port things from WinForms to, say, Flex, or simple want to use a new-fangled control library that may not expose the same abilities.
I say 'port' here, but that is really not the goal, we are not concerned with porting THIS particular app, but having the underlying MVC elements generic enough to be carried across to a new flavor -- internally, leaving a consistent and ability-independent external interface intact.
If you didn't do this, then when your new flavor comes along, all your hard references to view properties in the (potentially reusable/refactorable/extendable) controllers have to be mucked with.
This is not to mean that such generic setters and cmds have to be the interface for all your views abilities, but rather they should handle 'edge case' properties as well as the normal props/cmds you can expose in the traditional hard-link way. Think of it as an 'extended properties' handler.
That way, (contrived again), suppose you are building on a framework where your buttons no longer have buttonIcon property. Thats cool because you had the foresight to create a button view interface where buttonIcon is an extended property, and inside the view your conditional code does a no-op now when it receives the set/get.
In summary, I am trying to say that the coding goals of MVC should be to give the Model and View generic interfaces to their underlying components, so when you are coding a Controller you don't have to think to hard about who you are controlling. And while the Controllers are being (seemingly unfairly) set up to be the sacrificial lamb in the long run of re-usability -- this does not mean ALL your controllers are destined for death.
They are hopefully small, since a lot of their 'thinking' has been shoved off into semi-intelligent Models and Views and other controllers (ex: Controller to Sort a Grid or Manipulate a TreeView) -- so being small they can be easily looked at and qualified for reuse in your next project -- or cloned and tweaked to become suitable.
It actually reduces complexity by separating the workflow logic from the domain logic. It also makes it easier to write unit tests and makes your application easier to maintain and extend.
Imagine if you wanted to add a new data type. With the approach above, you would probably duplicate a lot of the workflow logic in the new class as it would be likely to be tightly coupled to the domain logic.
The discipline involved in separating the workflow logic into the controller makes it more likely that you will have fewer dependencies between workflow and domain logic. Adding a new data type would then be more simple, you create the new domain object and see how much of the controller you can reuse, e.g. by inherited from a controller super class.
It would also make it easier to change frameworks in future - the model would probably not change too much and so would be more portable.
Having said that, you might want to look into MVVM depending on what you are using as your presentation layer: Benefits of MVVM over MVC
Advantages of MVC/P (I am talking about Supervising Controller here) over MV include:
You can handle complex data binding code in the controller, if required.
You can test that complex presentation logic without a UI testing framework.
You can also have a graphic designer make your views, and not see your code, and not mess up your code when they fix your views.
I am quite new to MVC. I am having the following questions, please help me clarify those questions, thanks a lot.
Q1. Where should I populate my view model? e.g. My view model is very big, and contains a lot of the dropdown listbox, multi select list and the other few complex objects. I am currently populate them inside the view model self, by passing the model through the constructor, and load all the object data within the constructor. I also see my college populate the viewmodel inside controller. so I am confusing now, coz lots of people suggest to keep the controller small and skinny.
Q2. We are using the linq2sql as data access layer, should I use the table entity in my viewmodel instead of creating separate model class? Expert said it's bad, but if create seperate model class, I basically repeat them and I also need to copy those value to linq 2sql entity every time when I want to persist data, it's not that fun, too much work.
lots of people suggest to keep the controller small and skinny.
Yes. What people mean is that the controller should not contain any logic, except for model <-> view mapping. With model I mean the "M" in MVC.
Q2. We are using the linq2sql as data access layer, should I use the table entity in my viewmodel instead of creating separate model class? Expert said it's bad, but if create seperate model class, I basically repeat them and I also need to copy those value to linq 2sql entity every time when I want to persist data, it's not that fun, too much work.
No. You should not. Read my answer here: ASP.NET MVC Where to put custom validation attributes
Use a mapping framework for the model -> viewmodel conversion.
Update:
From what I understand, you suggest to assembly the viewmodel inside the controller (I mean call the business layer or repository to get my data) and use controller to call the business logic dealing with the data, am I right?
yes. The controller is really a glue between your business layer / repositories and your views. The views (and view models) should know nothing about them and the business layer / repositories should know nothing about the controller/view.
The controller was created for just that purpose. To create an abstraction between the user interface layer and the lower layers. Hence the only code that should exist in the controller is to make that possible (and therefore following the Single Responsibility Principle)
If you start adding that logic into your view models you start to add coupling between the lower layers and the user interface layer. Doing any changes in the lower layers will therefore also affect all your view models (instead of just the controller
your viewmodel should be a poco, and should most certainly not be handling the mapping of the model. if you don't want to map your model to your viewmodel in the controller i would suggest you look at something like automapper. it makes it easy.
once you've mapped from your model to your viewmodel, any extra properties that need to be set such as your lists should be set in the controller.
as i stated previously, definitely don't tie your viewmodel to your current orm or table structure. you never know what might need to be refactored, and if you can handle it via an automapper mapping instead of changing your view and viewmodel then you've saved yourself a significant amount of time.
I am learning Zend Framework and Doctrine.
I am wondering what is the best practice to connect forms to models and vice versa.
In some cases it is handy to load data from model in form class. Lets say a very unique class which use many models.
In other cases it is convenient to have methods in model class which prepares data for forms. Lets say it could have a method which returns an array prepared for select-options element, so this method will be useful for many forms.
I would like to have consistency and always keep this logic in one layer.
I think controller is not the right place because I want to keep it clear and simple.
What is your practice to achieve this goal (connect models to forms) ?
-
I am coming into conclusion that I should prepare my models for all my needs. If I have to deal with many models I will have a service layer (is it the right term?) which will connect those models. So the model or the service will have methods to hydrate data for forms. And it will be able to accept data from form values.
I think the controller is the best place for connecting models and forms. If you want to prevent a lot of code for populating the form create a populate method on the form that accepts a model.
If you let the models and forms communicate directly it will become very confusing what will happen at a particular time. I would create convenience methods like the populate method to keep things short, but all actions should be initiated from the controller to keep things central and prevent "magic behaviour".
Just my 2 cents..
Hey guys - here's a question on Zend Framework or better on MVC in general:
I am asking myself for a quiet a long time now, if it is a good idea to push business objects (User, Team, etc.) to my views or if it would be better just to push dump data containers such as arrays to the view for rendering.
When pushing business objects to my view I have a much tighter coupling between the views and my domain model, however, the view could easily do things like foreach($this->team->getUsers() as $user) { ... } which I personally find very handy.
Providing domain model data in dumb arrays to me looks more robust and flexbile but with the costs of that the view cannot operate on real objects and therefore cannot access related data using object's method.
How do you guys handle that?
Thanks much,
Michael
It's better to make your View access a Domain Model object in an object-oriented manner, instead of using the Controller to convert Model data into plain scalars and arrays.
This helps to keep the Controller from growing too fat. See the Anemic Domain Model anti-pattern. The Controller only needs to know what Model to instantiate, passes the request inputs to that Model, and then injects the Model into the View script and renders. Keep in mind that a Domain Model is not a data-access class.
You can also write View Helpers to encapsulate a generic rendering of a Domain Model object, so you can re-use it in multiple View scripts.
Your View should accesses the Domain Model only in a read-only manner. View scripts should not try to effect changes to the Domain Model.
You can also design your Domain Model to implement ArrayObject or other SPL type(s), as needed to make OO usage easy in the View script.
It's true, a large driving motivation of MVC and OO design in general is decoupling. We want to allow each layer to remain unchanged as the other layer(s) are modified. Only through their public APIs do the layers interact.
The ViewModel is one solution to abstract the Model so that the View doesn't need to change. The one I tend to use is Domain Model, which abstracts the details of table design, etc. and supplies an API that is more focused on the business rather than the data access. So if your underlying tables change, the View doesn't have to know about it.
I would expect that if there's a change to the Domain Model, for instance it needs to supply a new type of attribute, then it's likely that your View is changing anyway, to show that new attribute in the UI.
Which technique you choose to decouple one layer from the others depends on what types of changes you expect to be most frequent, and whether these changes will be truly independent changes, or if they will require changes to multiple layers anyway.
The "standard" approach would be to completely prepare the model in the controller (e.g. fetch all teams, including users) and then send that to the View for presentation, but you are not bound by that. The data structures can be whatever you want it to be: Array, ArrayObject or custom Classes - anything you deem appropriate.
I dont use Zend framework, so this is in repsonse to the general MVC Have a look at the ViewModel pattern.
http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/jimmy_bogard/archive/2009/06/29/how-we-do-mvc-view-models.aspx
I'm comming from a .Net MVC point of view but I believe the concepts will the same.
I will do all my view rendering in the controller bascially like below
model only output dataset/objects (this should contain the most code)
controller assign view and add necessary HTML and make use of models
view only contains placeholder and other presentation stuff and maybe ajax call
So my team can work on each part without interrupting each other, this also add some information security to the project i.e no one can retrieve all the working code they only communicate by variables/object spec.